Oxford University Press Monitoring the Blogosphere for New Words

Posted on August 17, 2007

A short entry on OxfordMail.net says the Oxford University Press is searching the blogosphere to find new words.

Staff at Oxford University Press have started monitoring the use of English in web logs to find new words.

Lexicographers responsible for updating the Oxford English Corpus, which provides the basis for its dictionaries, will trawl through some 70 million 'blogs' in their search.

And with 120,000 new ones created every day, they may be in for quite a search.

A Guardian books blog post also discusses the decision by the Oxford University Press (OUP) to monitor "the use of English in weblogs." They also provide this recently published list from OUP of the 15 most frequently blogged words.

15 Most Frequently Blogged Words

• blogger
• blog
• stupid
• me
• myself
• my
• oh
• yeah
• ok
• post
• stuff
• lovely
• update
• nice
• shit

These words don't exactly make us bloggers sound like masters of prose. In addition to scouring the blogosphere for new words the Oxford University Press also has a blog of its very own.

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